(In)visible Learning

Marketing learning is like marketing wind. You’re being asked to sell something natural, vital, fluid, and invisible. 

For the first half of my career in education, I was a teacher. I taught Psychology. I had to convince college freshmen that their thoughts were real and how invisible illnesses like Clinical Depression were diagnosed with tangible evidence. 

For the present half of my career in education, I’m a marketer. I tell the story of Kupu Hou Academy. I convince adult teachers that a close-knit professional development community supports radical self-confidence in their teaching practice, even when this community is oceans apart. 

When we are in our classrooms, we see the entire ecosystem of learning. From the first bell to the last student leaving campus, we witness the formation of a young person’s mind. We are steeped in learning. We smell the glue on homemade planetariums, we hear the keychains on backpacks running to lunch, and we get a paper cut between essays waiting to be read.

But, in truth, learning is still invisible just as wind is invisible. We know it exists. We know what it feels like. It is a natural phenomenon that occurs outside of the visible spectrum. We only know it is there by seeing its impacts. We can see the wind blowing through trees. We can see students using a new skill all on their own. 

As a marketer working in the education industry, you’re selling something that everyone has experienced: learning. You’re tasked to show how your school, academy, district, or app is creating and taking that universal experience and making it different. 

In order to do this, you need to be in the classroom with the teachers, in conversation with your students, and in concert with the vision, mission, and measurable goals of your institution. 

In my first year as an education marketer, I was taking a lot of photos of students at their desks. I was always capturing the same images of “learning.” Student A would be looking in a microscope. Student B would be giving a presentation. Rinse. Repeat. 

I realized that when my camera was down was when the real learning was happening. I needed a way to capture that authentic, formative space my camera could not reach. 

Unrulr lets us capture the invisible, irreplicable, and inspirational moments of learning only our school and academy can provide. Unrulr is a formidable product because of its ability to let the evidence of learning happen organically. With its limited parameters and highly customizable experience, no school’s Unrulr will look the same - nor should it. 

Education marketers are tasked with designing content in a saturated and highly-competitive landscape. With Unrulr, the process of capturing learning becomes not just expedited but meaningful. 

The material students and teachers post on Unrulr becomes your greatest asset for source material, content curation, and visual storytelling. 

How do you convince people to care about something that is as invisible and universal as learning? You have to show them what the world looks like when its impacts are at their most authentic level. You have to show them how learning at your school happens. The best way to do that is to let learning happen. Unrulr is the tool to let you be there when it does. Just like how windsocks tell us the speed of the wind when we can’t see it. And yes, I did just want to find a way to say “windsock” this entire time.

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